At the core of the Internet is the ability to connect together content. It was really this hyperlinking between pages that in many ways defined the difference between the early Internet and the bulletin boards and Usenet that preceded it. Google clearly saw the value of links, which they interpreted as people “voting” on the online content which they saw as most valuable. At the core of their search engine is the measurement of that linking activity. However while a huge amount of attention and investment has gone into tools to support publishers’ ability to create and post content and, of course, to create advertising around that content (literally around, by surrounding it in ads), publishers have lacked tools to properly support inserting, analyzing, managing and…
Category
Foundry Companies
The future of your past (our investment in Mocavo)
It’s funny how things have a way of working out. I wrote recently of our experience with SEOMoz – from initial meeting a few years ago to finally investing in them earlier this month. Today we announced our investment in Mocavo – a genealogy search platform that provides users with the best tools available to find information on their ancestors. More specifics on the business in a minute but the year long journey from TechStars to Foundry investment is worth noting. I first met Mocavo at the start of last year’s TechStars Boulder. I liked founder Cliff Shaw a lot and appreciated (although at the time didn’t share) his passion for genealogy. When he asked me to mentor them through the program…
What monks, chefs, lugers, singers, graffiti artists and actors all have in common
There’s a wealth of experience and expertise around us every day. We probably don’t give most people we pass running around our respective busy cities a second look, but rushing by you are people with interesting expertise and experience. Artists and actors; olympic athletes and monks; sailors and graffiti artists. SideTour looks to unlock this community and enable them to market and generate income off of their unique expertise. These experts – “hosts” in SideTour’s terminology – use the SideTour platform to advertise their experiences. SideTour helps them market these experiences and handles bookings, billing, refunds, etc. on their behalf. SideTour events are designed to be shared in groups – often people who haven’t met each other before the experience…
Too Lijit
This morning Federated Media announced that it has acquired Lijit Networks in a private stock deal. I’m incredibly proud of what the Lijit team has accomplished in the almost 4 years we’ve been investors in the business – charting a course that wasn’t exactly always a straight line, but one that has always placed publishers first. As a result of this never wavering focus on web publishers, Lijit has built a large and ultimately very valuable company. I’ve always thought that Federated was the natural acquirer for Lijit (and we’ve been partners with Federated for some time now). Federated shares Lijit’s focus on publishers (“the best of the independent web”), but unlike Lijit, who helps publishers generate revenue through better…
There is no “Foundry Group Boulder Signaling Problem”
Forbes published an article yesterday by Maureen Farrell stating that there’s a “signaling problem” for TechStars Boulder companies who don’t raise money from Foundry Group. “… one byproduct of [Foundry Group’s] generosity for any young Boulder company is that, if it hasn’t been funded by The Foundry Group, it must explain why. Otherwise it has a signaling problem, something that happens when a VC invests in an early round but doesn’t show up for later rounds.” And while I’m going to argue (forcefully) here that neither my partners nor I either believe this to be true or even wish for that kind of market power, I should acknowledge that I’ve heard this before. And not just in relation to TechStars…
StockTwits Ticker Link and Private Company Symbols
StockTwits announced two great new features in the last week that are worth checking out. The first is a partnership with SecondMarket to expand the StockTwits platform to include private company streams. So just as you’d tag a post with $AAPL you can now tag private companies (think $ZYNGA,$4SQ, etc). Just as it is for public equitites, tagging your posts (tweets, blogs, etc.) with private company symbols is a much more efficient way to identify the company you’re talking about and become a part of the broader conversation about a company. StockTwits has put together an impressive database of private company symbols and is adding to this list daily. The second feature was launched with less fanfare – a WordPress…
The rise of RTB and our investment in Triggit
Clearly a hot topic in online ad-tech right now is the rise of exchange-based buying and the advent of real-time bidding platforms (RTB) that allow advertisers and publishers to transact on an impression by impression basis. Given all the focus on RTB I sometimes have to remind myself that true real-time trading is less than a year into its existence. And given its nascence, the landscape of companies (buy side platforms, sell side platforms, data providers, agencies, brands, publishers, etc.) that are playing a part in these exchanges is changing rapidly. We’ve long been believers in audience based buying and selling of ad inventory. Our investment in Lijit is largely around this concept and more obviously, our work with AdMeld,…
How Trada Works – Niel Robertson’s Knitting Video
[Updated with the new video link/embed] You may not have realized this, but Niel Robertson is not only building a unique SEM marketplace, but he’s also a passionate knitter. The video below shows off both of these passions and is well worth watching. On a more serious note, I’m a big fan of companies producing these sorts of fun but informative videos. People respond so much better to highly visual, straightforward media such as this.
Medialets Announces Universal Mobile Ad SDK
Earlier this week, Medialets made a significant announcement: the launch of their universal mobile ad SDK. This is an initiative that the company has been working on for months and is truly groundbreaking in the industry. The Medialets universal ad SDK allows app developers to have complete flexibility in how they manage the ad inventory available through their applications. Publishers can serve Medialets rich media ads, ads from other mobile ad networks as well as ads from their own first party ad server – all from one SDK. The Medialets SDK is already up and running with major publishers (Washington Post, NPR, Variety, Fandango, etc.). This represents not just an achievement for Medialets, but a step forward in the evolution…
Join the search revolution! Introducing: Trada
While search marketing is already a huge business, more and more companies each day are discovering the advantages of advertising directly to customers through search engines. Companies like that they can directly measure the impact of their spending – from the clicks they are generating all the way through the products they are selling as a result of those site visits and that they can quickly and easily scale up their spending on what’s working in their search campaigns. With different ad groups, ad copy and landing pages, search marketers can customize their campaigns to fit their business needs. If there’s a downside to search, however, it’s that effectively managing search campaigns is extremely difficult. Even if you confine your…